Tag Archives: Page count

It took an entire year.

In not even counting the two months where I purposely did no writing at all, it took an entire year to write the second draft of my historical fiction novel-in-progress, which amounted to a complete rewrite of my first draft.

It took longer to write than the first draft itself, which I completed in 10 months back in in 2005.

The age of the thing alone terrified me, for how well could a ten-year-old story possibly hold up? I already knew going in that I’d have a fair amount of rewriting ahead of me, but the question was how much?

No, I’m still not finished my WIP.

But honest to goodness, this last novel in my historical fiction trilogy is truly almost done. I know I’ve written about being close before, but now I’m really close. Like, a two-digit number of pages remaining that starts with 2 (or maybe even one!) close.

When last I wrote about my WIP’s impending end, I discussed various insights that had occurred to me as I continued along this process.

Well, a new level of nearness to the end has engendered an all new set of realizations:

I should qualify this by saying I mean the end of my novel.

(Were I talking the end of my life, my thoughts would be considerably different, and if nothing else, I’d perhaps be referring back to this post about my bucket list.)

Ending a novel is hard. The fact that I’ve done it twice thus far in my writing career hasn’t made it any easier. Perhaps this is because only once did I consciously do so since my “two-book” series-in-progress grew to three books initially without my realizing it.

Writing a novel is one of the scariest things I’ve ever attempted.

I’ve moved to two different provinces on my own, both times having no prior friends or family present when I arrived.

I’ve come face-to-face with a bull moose during rutting season.

I’ve spend 24 straight hours in the woods on a fasting solo sit. (The fear in this isn’t possible animal encounters at night, but rather the act of sitting silently for hours with nothing to distract you but your own thoughts.)

I’ve risked – and received – rejection asking guys way out of my league out on dates.

Just to name a few. As my father is fond of paraphrasing from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, “The brave will only die once.”

This past week, I reached another milestone in my novel-in-progress:

Page 200.

Except it’s not really my 200th page, for my story is a novel in two volumes (like how Lord of the Rings is actually a novel in three volumes rather than the trilogy it’s often erroneously termed). The first volume of the story in draft form is 377 pages.

That means I’m technically on page 577.

The past two months has seen me achieve a number of writing milestones: my current page number; my one-year blogging anniversary on February 20; my writer’s birthday (which I actually missed) on February 10.